Top 25 Most Downloaded WordPress Plugins

The WordPress.org has over 20,000 plugins available to download. Some awesome, some not so awesome. I also find the WordPress.org search functions to not be very helpful, where if it adopted more of a Google style search function, it could be much more practical for people to use.

However, I’ve scoured the plugin repository and found 25 of the most downloaded WordPress plugins in the repository.

Akismet

Akismet is an anti-spam plugin created by Automattic. The primary reason it has the most downloads is that it comes with WordPress. So just because a strong majority of its downloads come from upgrades of existing installations (not new installations), it’s still something to note that it’s still a widely popular plugin.

All in One SEO Pack

The original WordPress SEO plugin, it has become the second most downloaded plugin on WordPress.org. It offers a number of great features, including canonical links, an SEO API, automatic meta tags, and much more. There is also a Pro version of this plugin available.

Jetpack by WordPress.com

Want to supercharge your WordPress.org site with WordPress.com features? Jetpack is how you do it. Jetpack offers widely popular features like comment and post subscriptions, Photon — the WordPress CDN for WordPress.org sites, WordPress.com Stats, VaultPress integration, Publicize, and much more.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Just one of Yoast’s WordPress plugins, Google Analytics for WordPress offers a lot of great customization options to enhance how your site is tracked with Google Analytics. This is just one of two plugins in the Top 25 by Yoast.

WordPress Importer

WordPress Importer is a plugin that is sort of baked into the WordPress core. I do not really consider this a popular plugin, only because it doesn’t receive many updates and the reason it has so many downloads is that it doesn’t ship with WordPress core.

WPtouch

Let’s talk about WordPress mobile. WPtouch, created by BraveNewCode, is one of the most popular WordPress mobile plugins. As responsive design gains more traction though, more sites are not needing a mobile-specific plugin as the theme itself is designed to work on mobile devices. BraveNewCode offers a premium version of this plugin, WPtouch Pro.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

This is the second plugin by Yoast that is in the Top 25. WordPress SEO by Yoast was released on January 2nd, 2009, just a year after All in One SEO Pack (AIOSP). But WordPress SEO by Yoast is growing a higher rate than AIOSP.

Google Analyticator

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Yet another related posts plugin. But seriously, that’s the name. It’s a really good option if you want to run server-side related posts. If you find it’s slowing down your site though, you may want to switch to something external, like Outbrain.

Shareaholic | email, bookmark, share buttons

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is a robust caching plugin for WordPress. It offers HTML/CSS/JS minifying, object and page caching, as well as CDN support. It is by far one of the most powerful caching plugins for WordPress. WPForce.com is happily powered by W3TC.

Smart YouTube PRO

Moving beyond just a YouTube embed, Smart YouTube PRO let’s you embed YouTube playlists on top of videos. It also supports other video providers like Vimeo, Metacafe, and Facebook videos. And just as everything should be today, it is also mobile-friendly, offering support for iPhone, iPad, and iPod.

Comments

Not entirely accurate, which is a little odd – comparing to plugintable.com, there’s actually #15, WP E-Commerce, that’s not on this list. The last one, ShareThis, is actually #26 – that’s because WPeC is not on the list.

I’m using almost 10 plugins that are mentioned in this list. One small thing I noticed is, some of the most downloaded plugins are not updated in a while. It would be great if those plugins are open sourced via Github. There are many developers who are interested to contribute to WordPress. They may find some time to fix the issues and to add some new features. Just my thoughts, what do you say?